Laura Ling Biography

Laura G. Ling (born December 1, 1976) is an American journalist and writer. She worked for Current TV as a correspondent and vice president of its Vanguard Journalism Unit, which produced the Vanguard TV series. She is the host and reporter on E! Investigates, a documentary series on the E! Network.

Ling is the sister of Lisa Ling, who is a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Geographic Explorer, and CNN. Laura Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained in North Korea after they illegally crossed into North Korea from the People's Republic of China without a visa. They were tried and convicted, then subsequently pardoned after former US President Bill Clinton flew to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-il.

Personal life

Ling's father Doug is a Chinese immigrant, born in China during the 1920s; her mother Mary Mei-yan (born Wang) is a Taiwanese immigrant from Tainan, Taiwan, and was the head of the Los Angeles office of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. They divorced when Laura Ling was four years old and her sister Lisa was 7. Following the divorce, the two sisters were raised in the city of Sacramento, California by their father. Ling describes herself as Chinese American, but a friend described her as "a true Valley girl ... about as Chinese as the cuisine at Chin Chin". She studied at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California; an English teacher there, who taught both Ling and her sister, claimed that when he first knew Ling, she was already interested in following her sister's footsteps into the journalism field; he described her as "different from her sister ... and more determined, in a sense". She graduated with a communications degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998.

On June 3, 2010, Ling gave birth to a girl, naming her Li Jefferson Clayton, in Burbank, California. Laura and her husband decided to name the baby Li, after Laura's sister Lisa, and chose Jefferson as a middle name as a tribute to former President William Jefferson Clinton.

Career

Ling's career as a journalist began when she became a producer at Channel One News, She co-created Breaking it Down, a documentary series on MTV that aired between 1999 and 2001. Afterward, Ling joined Current TV, where she reported on issues about Cuba, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the West Bank, and the Amazon River, as well as about shantytowns in Sao Paulo, Brazil, gangs and homeless teens in Los Angeles, and underground churches in China. Prior to her detention, she had been reporting about the Mexican Drug War.

Ling hosted a one-hour news show on E!. The show premiered on Dec. 8, 2010.

2009 detention in North Korea

In the last week of March 2009, North Korea announced that two American journalists were detained and would be indicted and tried for illegally entering the country. On May 3, 2009, it was officially announced that Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were the journalists that had been detained, after they attempted to film refugees along the border with China. In June 2009, they were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison for illegal entry into North Korea, and unspecified hostile acts. Many in the media called it a show trial. The United States government made diplomatic efforts to oppose this sentence before their release in August 2009.

Lisa Ling stated that when they left the United States, her sister and Lee never intended to cross into North Korea. She has also revealed that her sister requires medical treatment for an ulcer from which she is currently suffering.

Ling was pardoned along with Euna Lee, and they have both returned to the United States following an unannounced visit to North Korea by former US President Bill Clinton on August 4, 2009. Some human rights activists in South Korea have accused Lee and Ling of needlessly placing North Korean refugees in danger by not being more careful with their tapes and notebooks in the event they were apprehended.

In 2010, Ling co-wrote a memoir, Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home, with her sister Lisa, based on her experiences in North Korea.